Patience Spalding

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
The relationships between the African-American Thorpes mentioned in the post for 16 June 2019 are unknown. [1] Nancy and Ed probably were siblings, but may have been first cousins. Floyd could have been the child, cousin, or nephew of either, or might have been related to an entirely different family on Harris Neck who took the Thorp name.

Nancy told Lydia Parrish her grandmother "came from Africa and was old in 1862." [2] Ed told WPA interviewers in 1937 [3] that his grandmother "come from Africa and her name was Patience Spalding" ("come from Africa and uh name wuz Patience Spalding.") [4]

Ed was described as "eight-three years old," [5] which means he was born around 1854. If Patience came from Thomas Spalding’s Sapelo Island plantation, then it’s possible her son or daughter [6] was sold to one of the Thorpes on Harris Neck after Spalding died in 1851. [7] Patience may have rejoined her kin during the Civil War, possibly in 1862. [8]

When the Lincoln announced his intent to blockade Confederate ports in April 1861, [9] rebel soldiers were sent to Saint Simons [10] and Sapelo islands. [11] After Union forces took Port Royale, South Carolina, in November, residents were told to leave. [12 ]

Thomas Spalding’s daughter-in-law, Mary Bass Spalding, superintended the evacuation of Sapelo. William McFeely thinks she used boats to ferry slaves to the mainland, then marched them to a plantation she’d rented in Baldwin County near the state capital of Milledgeville. [13]

Confederate soldiers were moved from Sapelo to Savannah, and the Union took over. In February 1863, a group of soldiers found "7 superannuated contrabands and one cripple" in "an old hut." [14] McFeely believed Bass Spalding may have left anyone behind who was not able to work and walk 200 miles. [15]

Patience may have been one of the abandoned. She then may have joined others on the island who put together a raft or other crude boat to get to safety on the mainland. From there she must have made her way to Harris Neck.

She was a Muslim who continued her prayer regimen after she joined Ed’s family. He remembered:

"When my gran pray, she kneel down on the floor. She bow her head down three time and she say ‘Ameen, Ameen, Ameen’." ("Wen muy gray pray, she kneel down on duh flo. She bow uh head down three time an she say ‘Ameen, Ameen, Ameen’.") [16]

Ed also told WPA interviewers that his grandmother had told him about "conjuring in Africa" where "there was some what could fly" ("cunjuh in Africa" [17] where "deah wuz some wut could fly.") [18]

The post for 9 June 2019 mentioned the incident near Sapelo Island when some Igbo slaves drowned themselves in 1803. That remained part of the lore of the island. [19] Shad Hall, told WPA interviewers:

"Those folks could fly too. They tell me, there was a lot of them that were brought here and they weren’t much good. The master was fixing to tie them up and then whip them. They say, ‘Master, you ain’t going to lick me,’ and with that they ran down to the river. The overseer he sure thought he would catch them when they got to the river. But, before he could get to them, they rose up in the air and flew away. They flew right back to Africa. I think that happened on Butler’s Island."

"Doze folk could fly too. Dey tell me deah’s a lot ub um wut wuz bring heah an dey ain much good. Duh massuh wuz fizin tuh tie um up tuh whip um. Dey say, ‘Massah, you ain gwine lick me,’ and wid dat dey runs down tuh duh ribbuh. Duh obuhseeuh he sho tought he ketch um when dey git tuh duh ribbuh. But fo he could git tum um, dey riz up in duh eah an fly away. Dey fly right back duh Africa. I tink that happen on Butler Ilun." [20]

Hall was the great-grandson of Bilali Mohamed, the Muslim mentioned in the post for 9 June 2019 who managed the Sapelo Island plantation for Thomas. Scholars, who have studied him, think there is no reason to believe he was the only Muslim on the plantation. [21]

Most Muslims caught in the slave trade were Fulani, like Bilali. They [22] were living in southern Mauritania around the time of Christ, and could have been descended from cattlemen living there in the second and third millennia BC, according to François de Medeiros. [23] When the French attacked their religious leaders on the Sénégal river in the 1720s, the Fulani moved south to Futa Jallon. [24]

Not all Fulani were Muslims, and when the Muslims raided the non-Muslims for slaves, the pagans retaliated. Fulani of every belief were sold to slave traders.

The more serious problem for both groups was their livelihood depended on herds of cattle, which lived on the grasses in the chartreuse Sahel that existed between the ivory desert and the lime-green-savannah on the above map.

Desertification was moving the boundary with the Sahara south, and the cattle were following their food supply. Clive Spinage noted a severe drought between 1738 and 1756 that reached from the Sahel to the Guinea coast was "probably the most severe ever recorded." More droughts occurred in the Sahel between 1770 and 1774. One in 1790 again reached the Guinea coast. After a few wet years, drought returned between 1795 and 1800. [25]

When the Fulani migrated east to find better grasslands, they often were seen by nearby settlements as sources of wealth to be taxed. This, in turn, led to more conflicts, which led to more people being sold to slave traders at the time when men like Thomas were buying slaves after the American Revolution.

Map
"Map of Potential Distribution of Vegetation Macrogroups of Africa." United States Geological Survey, Global Ecosystems website.

End Notes
1. The relationships might be discovered by looking at the manuscript census for Harris Neck for every decade between 1870 and 1920.

2. Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. 50.

3. The WPA’s Drums and Shadows did not indicate when the interviews were conducted. However, the Federal Writers project began asking about superstitions after John Lomax provided them with a questionnaire in 1937. [26] The federal project ended in 1938. [27] The University of Georgia Press in Athens published the Georgia Writers Project’s Drums and Shadows in 1940. The Savannah project was directed by Mary Granger.

4. Drums. 114.

5. Drums. 114. It isn’t known if this Ed Thorpe is the same Eddie Thorpe quoted by Parrish in the post for 16 June 2019, or another person.

6. Neither Nancy nor Ed indicated if Patience was a maternal or paternal grandparent.

7. Thomas Spalding was discussed in the post for 9 June 2019. He did not like to sell slaves, and, when necessary, did not like to break up families. That inhibition may not have extended to middle-aged adults, especially if they were on nearby plantations and could visit. When he wrote his will in 1848, he had some debts he hoped could be paid by future crops. His biographer did not indicate if he succeeded. [28]

8. Nancy may not have known the date in 1862, but she could easily have figured it out by discovering the dates for national events that occurred at the same time she first remembered Patience.

9. George Alexander Heard. "St. Simons Island During the War Between the States." The Georgia Historical Quarterly 22:249–272:1938. 250.

10. Heard. 251.

11. Ray City, Georgia, Community Library. "Berrien Minute Men on Sapelo Island: Part 6." Ray City History website. 21 October 2017.

12. Heard. 252.

13. William S. McFeely. Sapelo’s People: A Long Walk into Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1994. 64. His source was a letter written by the wife of one of Mary Bass Spalding’s sons. Ellen Barrow Spalding wrote: "they had been moved en masse to a rented plantation in Baldwin County, Georgia, near Milledgeville, when they refugeed to that place." [29]

14. Samuel Pellman Boyer. Naval Surgeon, Blockading the South, 1862–1866. Diary edited by Elinor Barnes and James A. Barnes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963. 72. Entry for 21 February 1863.

15. McFeely. 66–67. Boyer also found abandoned slaves on Saint Catherine’s Island. He wrote they were "left behind simply because they were not fit for much labor. Rather a rough procedure. Old Smart says his ‘massa’ took all his children and grandchildren along with him except one." [30]

16. Drums. 115. Bilali’s great-granddaughter, Katie Brown, remembered his wife, Phoebe, would say "Ameen, Ameen." [31] Sylviane Diouf said "Ameen is the Muslim equivalent to amen." [32]

17. "Cunjuh" was defined as "magical practice, the casting of spells." [33]
18. Drums. 115.

19. Douglas Chambers traced the knowledge of the Igbo incident on Sapelo Island. [34] Michael Gomez analyzed the tales published in Drums. [35]

20. Drums. 156.

21. Gomez [36] and Diouf have discussed the Muslim communities of Sapelo and Saint Simons islands.

22. "Fulani" is the Hausa term. "Fula" is the Portuguese. "Fulbe" is the currently preferred synonym. [37]

23. B. F. de Medeiros. "The Peoples of the Sudan: Population Movements." 119–139 in Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. Edited by M. El Fasi. Paris: UNESCO, 1988.

24. Futa Jallon was discussed in post for 13 January 2019. A map showing its location was published on 24 March 2019.

25. Clive Spinage. African Ecology: Benchmarks and Historical Perspectives. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2012. 159–161; quotation, 159.

26. Diane Trap. "Slave Narratives." Georgia Encyclopedia website. 12 September 2007; last updated 2 August 2018.

27. Wikipedia. "Slave Narrative Collection."

28. E. Merton Coulter. Thomas Spalding of Sapelo. University: Louisiana State University Press,1940. 299–300.

29. Ella Barrow Spalding. Letter to Charles Spalding Wylly. August 1914. Reprinted in The Journal of Archibald C. McKinley. Edited by Robert K. Humphries. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991. 239.

30. Boyer. 205–206, entry for 23 November 1863.
31. Drums. 150.

32. Sylviane A. Diouf. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York: New York University Press, 2013 edition. 88.

33. Drums. 229.

34. Douglas B. Chambers. "Ebo Landing: History, Myth, and Memory." Nebula.Wsimg website. 2015.

35. Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 117–120.

36. Michael A. Gomez. "Africans, Culture, and Islam in the Low Country." 103–130 in African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry. Edited by Philip D. Morgan. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.

37. Wikipedia. "Fula People."

Floyd Thorp - Come by Here

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Robert Winslow Gordon collected a version of "Come by Here" from Floyd Thorp, [1] with no notes on when or where he recorded it. Stephen Winick assumed it was made near Darien, Georgia in 1926 or 1927. [2]

Thorp is one of those common names that in and of themselves are meaningless. The base word is a place name. Thus, Oglethorpe is "composed of the Old Norse elements ‘odd’, point of a weapon, and ‘ketill’, sacrificial cauldron, with ‘thorp’, village, settlement, farm." [3] People of the name migrated to all parts of what would become the United States. The last name of Rosetta Tharpe, who was discussed in the post for 23 December 2017, was a variant.

McIntosh County, whose county seat was Darien, posted the titles of court cases heard between 1875 and 1925. One file box in the archives mentioned state actions against ten Thorpes, including Floyd, Alonzo, Eddie, and Nancy. [4]

Nancy Thorpe was the most important of these. Lydia Parrish said she and Alonzo " joined the Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia" after a bridge was built connecting Saint Simons Island with the mainland in 1924. [5] From that we know one branch of African-American Thorpes were singers.

Lorenzo Dow Turner interviewed her when he was doing field work on the Gullah language on Harris Neck. [6] The swampy peninsula laid between two creeks that emptied into the South Newport River that marked the boundary between McIntosh and Liberty Counties. [7] It’s located just above the "rt" in Newport in the map below.

If one assumes Nancy’s family took the surname of their owner and stayed in the general area after Emancipation, then she or her ancestors were owned by Charles Joseph Washington Thorpe or his son, Charles Courtney Thorpe. Neither were large slave owners. At most they possessed 22 individuals.

Charles Thorpe was born in Charleston, [8] and moved to Sunbury in what is now Liberty County, Georgia, after the American Revolution. He married Anne Jurdine there in 1789. [9] Charles J. W. was born in 1792. [10] By then, Charles was involved in building the road to Harris Neck. [11]

Harris Neck lands first had been granted by the Oglethorpe trustees to Daniel Demetre in 1750. [12] Representatives of George II granted him and William Harris more land. [13] Their properties were consolidated when Demetre married Harris’s widow. Edward Baker claimed adjacent land on the peninsula in 1773. [14]

Antebellum land transfer records were destroyed in courthouse fires, so no one knows quite how those grants were willed, subdivided or sold before Reconstruction. Much of Thorpe’s land had been claimed by Baker. [15] His neighbor, Jonathan Thomas, owned much of the Demetre-Harris lands. [16] He had married Mary Jane Baker. [17]

Charles apparently was established before the slave trade was banned in 1808 by the United States. [18] After that, he and his descendants had only three ways to increase their labor supply: smugglers, neighbors, or purchases from traders from places like Virginia.

After Charles died, Thomas advertised for a run away slave owned by Thorpe. Armstrong was described as a twenty-five-year-old mulatto in 1822. [19] Edward Thomas, who was born in 1840, remembered his family rarely bought or sold slaves, and he only remembered one mulatto. [20] It may be Jonathan sold those particular slaves, and one of the Thorpes may have been one of the beneficiaries.

The only other relevant thing known about Charles J. W. was his trusteeship of the South Newport Baptist Church in 1841. [21]

The Baptist first arrived in Sunbury after Charles left. Charles Odingsell Screven was the great-great-grandson of the first Calvinist Baptist in Charleston. [22] His only converts in the early years were Negroes, and the church remained predominantly African American. Screven, and his successors, preached in local plantation praise houses, [23] probably including ones on Harris Neck.

How much either Thrope encouraged religion is unknown. However, during Reconstruction one Thorpe young woman was literate enough to teach in a Freemen’s Bureau school in Darien in 1868 and 1869, and was working to establish an African-American school on Harris Neck. [24] The First African Baptist Church was built on Harris Neck a decade or so later. [25]

Eddie Thorpe told Parrish "slaves, when allowed to go to a praise-house that was out of bounds, were given passes with their promise to return before sun-up." He also told her on New Year’s Eve, the watch night began with prayers, songs, and a sermon. At midnight, individuals took turns thanking the Lord and asking for his continued blessings. "The shouting then begin, and continued until dawn." [26]

Map
Liberty County Historical Society. Its website has been abandoned and no information is available about the old map.

Table
1825. Sullivan. 213.

1850. Jack F. Cox. The 1850 Census of Georgia Slave Owners. Baltimore: Clearfield Company, 1999. 308

1860. Sullivan. 790.
1862. Sullivan. 275.

End Notes
1. Like Wylie discussed in the post for 2 June 2019, it is not clear if Thorp had changed the spelling of his name or if Gordon transcribed what he had heard without knowing the local nomenclature. I am not standardizing, but using the spellings ascribed to each individual.

2. Stephen Winick. "The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song." Folklife Center News 34(3–4): 3–10:2010.

3. "Last name: Oglethorpe." Surname Database website.

4. "Unbound Civil and Criminal Case Files of the Superior Court of McIntosh County." Record Group 198, Box 20. The other Thorpes listed in the sequence were Albert, Annie, Charles E., Josiah S. L., Luther, and W. L. One suspects these may have been tax liens.

5. Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. xxiii.

6. Lorenzo Dow Turner. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2002 edition. 292.

7. Wikipedia. "Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge" and "South Newport River." These places were shown on the map published on 3 February 2019.

8. "Charles Thorpe." Geni website. 8 November 2014.
9. "Ann Jurdine." My Heritage website.

10. Carolyn Jane Crown. "Charles Joseph Washington Thorpe." Geni website. 23 May 2016.

11. Buddy Sullivan. Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater. Darien, Georgia: McIntosh County Board of Commissioners, 1990. 236.

12. Sullivan. 39.
13. Sullivan. 40.
14. Sullivan. 229.
15. Sullivan. 229.
16. "The Story of Harris Neck." United States Fish and Wildlife Service website.
17. PHH. "John Abbott Thomas." Geni website. 15 November 2011.

18. The United States ban was different from the British one that effected the trade in Africa; this ban impacted the purchaser.

19. Advertisement placed by Jonathan Thomas. 14 May 1822. Quoted by Emma Rountree. "Runaway Slave Ads, Savannah Republican, 1819 – 1823." Davenport House Museum website. 2014. Thomas may have been the executor for Thorpe’s estate.

20. Edward J. Thomas. Memoirs of a Southerner. Savannah: 1923. Quoted by Sullivan. 244.

21. Sullivan. 237.

22. William Chandler Lanier Jr. "Charles Odingsell Screven." Geni website. 27 February 2018.

Ryan Matthew McRae. "Brig. Gen. James B. Screven." Geni website. 26 November 2017.
"James Screven." Geni website. 18 November 2014.
"Samuel Screven." Geni website19 July 2017.
Lawrence Wall. "Rev. William Screven." Geni website. 12 March 2017.

23. S. G. Hillyer. Reminiscences of Georgia Baptists. Atlanta: Foote and Davies Company, 1902.

24. Sullivan. 790. She only was identified as Miss Thorpe.

25. "The Story of Harris Neck" had 1882. Friends of the Savannah Coastal Wildlife Refuges had 1879. ("Harris Neck Timelime." Coastal Refuges website.)

26. Parrish. 56.

Six-Line Format - Come by Here

Topic: Early Versions
"Kumbaya" developed as a version within the "Come by Here" song cluster in the 1950s. Chee Hoo Lum [1] and Stephen Winick [2] have established the original song was circulating in coastal Georgia and South Carolina in the 1920s where an African-American creole language called Gullah survived from slavery times.

It then existed in two forms. One repeated a single line six times: AAAAAA. The other repeated a single line three times, with a different fourth line: AAAB. The sestet was the more widely diffused.

Floyd Thorp combined four stanzas describing Daniel in the lion’s den with "Lord, I am worthy now" and "Lordy won’t you come by here." He was recorded in 1926 near Darien, Georgia, by Robert Winslow Gordon. [3]

None of his verses used the statement-refrain format. The inclusion of verses from other songs was characteristic of this improvised form. "Daniel was recorded as a separate song by the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet in 1927. [4]

The six-line verse was then known in Atlanta where Clara Hudman recorded a commercial version in 1930. She began with "needed time" and ended with "won’t you come by here." Another sestet asked the Lord if He would hear her pray. When she began humming, a man in the background sang "won’t you hear my cry" while two women made comments. [5]

It had been recorded earlier in Chicago by Charles Henry Pace who was born in Atlanta and moved to Chicago around 1900. [6] Verses sung in 1927 by the Pace Jubilee Singers included "this is a needed time," "won’t you stop by here," and "oh Lordy, won’t you hear my cry." One verse referred to a gambler. [7]

The next year Daniel Brown recorded a version in Chicago with the verse "Lord won’t you come by here." The others were entreaties to the Lord to hear him pray, groan, and cry, along with a line from "Standing in the Need of Prayer." [8] Nothing more is known about him.

Even less is known about another version recorded in Camden, New Jersey, in 1923 by the Bethel Jubilee Quartet. Victor never released "Now Is the Needy Time." [9] All that survived were the names of the men paid to sing: Thomas H. Wiseman, H. S. Allen, A. C. Brogdon, and J. C. Eubanks. [10] Wiseman was a minister in Chicago when he organized the group. [11]

The six-line form also moved into Alabama where Ruby Pickens Tartt collected a version in Sumpter County that combined three of Pace’s verses with "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "I’m goin’ down in your name." Her unidentified source began the third lines with "Oh Lord." The other five started with just "Lord." [12]

Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded this version in Houston in 1952 as "Needed Time." Like the other sestets it was a loose combination of repeated verses: "come by here," "come if you don’t stay long," "praying," "praying on my knees."

It differed from the others because Hopkins was a blue musician, who was more familiar with the AAB blue format. As mentioned in the post for 21 August 2018, he began singing the AAAAAA form, but then changed to AAABBB. At one point, he adopted the blue form within the sestet. [13]

Hopkins’s recording crystalized into a distinct version like "Kumbaya." Inez Andrews’ "It’s a Needed Time" became a similar node in the cluster. Her 1965 performance was discussed in the post for 27 August 2018.

End Notes
These versions will be discussed in more detail in future posts.

1. Chee Hoo Lum. "A Tale of ‘Kum Ba Yah’." Kodaly Envoy 33(3):5-11:2007. Copy provided by Lum.

2. Stephen Winick. "The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song." Folklife Center News 34(3-4):3-10:2010.

3. Floyd Thorp. "Daniel in the Lion’s Den." Collected by Robert Winslow Gordon near Darien, Georgia, 1926. Archives of American Folk Song.

4. Norfolk Jubilee Quartet. "Daniel In The Lion’s Den." Paramount 12499. New York. February1927.

5. Clara Hudman. "Lordy Won’t You Come by Here." Okeh. Atlanta, Georgia. 12 December 1930.

6. Cassandra Pritts. "Charles Henry Pace Gospel Music Collection." University of Pittsburgh library website. April 2003.

7. Pace Jubilee Singers. "Lawdy Won’t You Come By Here." Brunswick 7009. 1927.
8. Daniel Brown. "Now Is the Needy Time." Paramount 12663. Chicago. May 1928.

9. Bethel Jubilee Quartet. "Now Is the Needy Time." Victor B-28188. Camden, New Jersey, 13 July 1923. Not issued and the masters were destroyed.

10. Craig Martin Gibbs. Black Recording Artists, 1877-1926: An Annotated Discography. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013.

University of California, Santa Barbara, Library. Discography of American Historical Recordings. Library website.

11. Dave Lewis. "Uncle Dave Lewis presents Rainbow 1092: Homer Rodeheaver & and the Wiseman Sextet." YouTube. 2 January 2014

12. "Lord, Won’t You Come by Here." Alabama Department of Archives and History. "Lyrics and some musical scores" folder 3. Unnumbered typescript. 60.

13. See post for 21 August 2018 for recording details.